This video is making the internet rounds. It’s been described as triumphant. (It’s of U.S. soccer star Megan Rapinoe being asked to describe herself in one word, and she responds with “GAAAAY.”)

I’ve certainly felt triumphant about being queer before. In fact, being queer is possibly my favorite thing about my life.

The queer community and queer love are so important to me. Queer people are my closest friends. I tend to be attracted (intellectually, romantically, and friend-wise) to people who play with gender, who are attracted to multiple genders, who don’t shy away from nuance and gray areas, who mess with binaries, who feel some kind of identification (even if complicated) with the words “queer” and “genderqueer.”

I love who and how I love. I love that my form of love plays with gender and sexuality norms. I love queer bodies, mine and those of the people I love. I love people who play with color, who bind, who shop in the side of the store not traditionally “designated” for them, who shave shapes into their hair, who take feminine accessorizing and inject it with a hearty sense of play, self-awareness, and edginess.

My love makes some people uncomfortable, makes some people stare. It might be because they are trying to read the gender of my partners, the most recent of whom have identified as trans* or genderqueer. But there might also be some young people who see themselves reflected in my love and know that soon they too will have real queer love. Maybe I’m being presumptuous or self-absorbed. Or maybe just hopeful. Or maybe I’m just remembering how I looked upon queer couples before I knew myself to be queer.

I’m sure straight people have communities or groups where they feel most at home, most affiliated. And I know that as a white person, it’s a privilege to be able to choose which identity is most important to me. People of color in the U.S. are often told who they are in a way that erases their intersections. But I can relate to Megan Rapinoe. I love celebrating my queerness.

More to say on this in the future, but for now, these are just some initial (read: jumbled) thoughts. Thanks for reading. Love you.

1.) Sam Taylor just finished an eleven-month tour in Iraq as a chaplain’s assistant with the U.S. army. While enlisted, she hid her transgender identity and even dealt with a fellow soldier who insisted that all ” ‘she-males’ would be rounded up and killed ” in a just world. Taylor is back home in North Carolina and beginning to resume the life she left behind, beginning to take estrogen, coming out to the men she served alongside. When speaking to the Chapel Hill News in a recent article, she wouldn’t comment on how estrogen was changing her body:

“I feel that, because there are so many stories and jokes and ideas about what happens to a trans woman’s body … and because that journey is often so visible to the outside world, non-trans people often feel that they are no longer bounded by standards of politeness when it comes to questions about a trans person’s body,” she said.

2.) The AP did an important story about LGBT homeless youth, a community left behind by politics and budget cuts. The article has photos and stories from homeless youth in Detroit and New York City. It paints a grim picture of the dearth of services, but a strong picture of resilience and self-made community. The good news is that the Obama administration is hosting a “national conference on housing and homelessness in America’s LGBT communities” today in Detroit.

3.) UH-OH: “The [Utah] Legislature gave final passage Tuesday to a bill that would let schools skip teaching sex education and prohibit instruction in the use of contraception.” Schools in Utah already allow parents to opt-out of having their kids attend sex-education classes, but under this new bill, schools can choose to skip the topic altogether, and if they do teach, they must cover abstinence only.

I attended a rally on Monday of this week put on by a coalition of organizations fighting for more homeless shelters for LGBTQ young people. According to the flyer, an LGBTQ teen is 8 times more likely to experience homelessness than a straight teen in New York City. This is because as people come out younger and younger, many are being kicked out of their homes or facing isolation and bullying in schools. Every night in New York City, almost 4000 young people are without stable housing, but there are fewer than 200 youth shelter beds. Facing cuts by the city and state, supporters came out to demand protection for these vulnerable young people.

I interviewed a few people at the rally and spliced together a quick video of people’s impressions:

Steven Tin, executive director of the Better Chinatown Society, said there was no reason to exclude the groups. “Why not?” he said. “We basically welcome groups that want to do a cultural celebration.”

I was at the Chinese New Year Parade in Flushing, Queens (a smaller affair than the Manhattan festivities), so I missed this. I didn’t see any LGBT groups at the Queens parade. Who wants to change that?!